When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day comes around every January, do you take pause to think about why we have a national holiday celebrating this man? Is much said in our local schools about who he was and the work he did? Do we think his work has been accomplished?

Because of Dr. King’s assassination I was not born yet when he was the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. My parents, however, were in college and starting their lives as young professionals. My dad was training to be a minister in the 1960s. How wonderful to be inspired by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words and actions and being in the same career. Having parents who were influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and its message had an impact on me.

Not too long ago my dad and I spoke about King’s “beloved community”. King believed the way to fight injustice was to do it nonviolently.

Where injustice ends love will blossom and a beloved community will form. This sounds easy enough on paper. Anyone who did anything with the Civil Rights Movement knew it was anything but easy.

Many people put their lives at risk and some died so people could vote. It is still not easy for everyone to vote in the United States today. Many people put their lives at risk and some died so buses and schools could be desegregated and equal. Our schools are still not equal everywhere in the United States today. People put their lives at risk and some died to expose the poverty and racial discrimination in the country. We still have poverty and racial discrimination.

Now you could come back with the attitude that Dr. King’s ideas really were just a lofty unreachable dream. I believe King’s hopes can be reality if we allow our minds to be open to the true roots of racism brought from Europeans to America and imposed on Native Americans and then Africans. Then, we have to be open to education, change, and understanding what we have done to each other and ourselves.

When Martin Luther King Jr. Day comes each year it can be a reminder of the man and all the people who had a part in the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King was the face of the movement with so many others around him. Others that helped lead were: A. Philip Randolph, Diane Nash, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rep. John Lewis, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and Coretta Scott King.

Let this be a time that inspires us to see the systems in our country that are unjust, even if it does not impact you directly, and transform them. We can be better than we are when we commit to becoming a beloved community.

“The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness. Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys.” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957